Ethiopia

The National Police

In traditional Ethiopian society, customary law resolved
conflicts, and families usually avenged wrongs committed
against their members. The private armies of the nobility
enforced law in the countryside according to the will of
their leaders. In 1916 the imperial government formed a
civilian municipal guard in Addis Ababa to ensure obedience
to legal proclamations. The general public despised the
municipal guard, nearly all of whose members were
inefficient at preserving public order or investigating
criminal activities.

In 1935 the emperor authorized the establishment of formal,
British-trained police forces in Addis Ababa and four other
cities. Seven years later, he organized the Imperial
Ethiopian Police under British tutelage as a centralized
national force with paramilitary and constabulary units. In
1946 the authorities opened the Ethiopian Police College at
Sendafa. In 1956 the imperial government amalgamated the
separate city police forces with the national police force.
Initially administered as a department of the Ministry of
Interior, the national police had evolved, by the early
1970s, into an independent agency commanded by a police
commissioner responsible to the emperor.

Local control over police was minimal, despite imperial
proclamations that granted police authority to governors
general of the provinces. Assistant police commissioners in
each of the fourteen provinces worked in conjunction with
the governors general, but for the most part Addis Ababa
directed administration. The Territorial Army's provincial
units, commanded by the governor general and by an unpaid
civilian auxiliary in areas where police were scarce,
assisted the national police force. Police posts were found
in all cities and larger towns and at strategic points along
the main roads in the countryside. The police usually
recruited local men who were familiar with the social values
of the areas in which they served; however, the populace
rarely looked upon such individuals with affection. Police
operations generally emphasized punishment rather than
prevention.

In 1974 the national police numbered approximately 28,000
in all branches, including 6,000 in the Mobile Emergency
Police Force; 1,200 frontier guards; and a 3,200-member
commando unit with rapid reaction capability. The Federal
Republic of Germany (West Germany) supplied the paramilitary
police with weapons and vehicles and installed a nationwide
teleprinter system, while Israeli counterinsurgency
specialists trained commandos and frontier guards. About
5,000 constabulary police, mostly recruited locally, served
in Eritrea, as did 2,500 commandos.

After the 1974 overthrow of Haile Selassie, the new Marxist
government severely circumscribed the authority of the
national police, which had been identified with the old
regime and regional interests. The authorities accused
constables of protecting landowners against peasants in the
countryside, of arresting supporters of the military regime
in Addis Ababa, and of being members of the "rightist
opposition." In Eritrea, however, the army already had taken
over police functions in January 1975 from local police
units suspected of being sympathetic to the secessionists.
The Asmera police voluntarily stayed at their posts for some
time after their dismissal to protect civilians from attack
by unruly soldiers.

In 1977 the Mengistu regime reorganized the national
police, placing a politically reliable commissioner in
command. A security committee formulated policy, which then
was implemented by the Ministry of Interior. The army
assumed a larger role in criminal investigation and in
maintaining public order. People's Protection Brigades took
over local law enforcement duties previously assigned to the
constabulary. As a result of these changes, by 1982 the
strength of the national police had declined to about
17,000. Mengistu also created the army's new Eighth Division
from police commando units. Other special units joined the
augmented 9,000-member paramilitary Mobile Emergency Police
Force for employment in counterinsurgency operations.

The Directorate of Police, which reported to the
commissioner, included the special Criminal Investigation
Branch, which had the role in directing police
counterinsurgency activities through regional branch
offices. Another branch of the directorate investigated
economic crimes, particularly smuggling and other forms of
illicit commerce. The Revolutionary Operations Coordinating
Committee, organized at the subregion level, cooperated with
the police in battling smuggling and economic sabotage.

The Marxist regime stressed that the mission of the
national police was essentially political--more involved
with suppressing political dissent as the local law
enforcement role shifted to People's Protection Brigades.
Mengistu described the police mission as contributing to the
"intensification of the class struggle."

The government adopted a policy whereby police constables
were recruited at an early age and trained in their native
regions. Training was designed to allow police stationed in
remote areas to be self-sufficient in building and
maintaining their posts. Training standards were not
uniform, and, unless it took place in Addis Ababa, inservice or specialized training was limited. In politically
stable rural areas where duty requirements and supervision
were less exacting, the police were less efficient than
their urban counterparts. A high percentage of rural
constables could neither read nor write and therefore did
not keep records of their activities. Many crimes were
considered to be matters concerning only the persons
involved and were often ignored by the police unless one of
the interested parties filed a complaint.

The Addis Ababa police, by contrast, were organized into
uniformed, detective, and traffic units; a riot squad, or
"flying column"; and a police laboratory--organizational
refinements not found in regional police units. A small
number of women served in police units in large cities.
Generally, they were employed in administrative positions or
as guards for female prisoners. National police officers
were paid according to the same standardized wage scale that
applied to members of the armed forces.

As a rule, police in constabulary units were armed only
with batons. Small arms usually were kept in designated
armories and were issued for specific duties. Matériel used
by paramilitary units included heavy machine guns,
submachine guns, automatic rifles, side arms, mortars,
grenades, tear gas, light armored vehicles, and other
equipment adaptable to riot control and counterinsurgency
operations. Larger police units, such as the one in Addis
Ababa, were also equipped with modern military vehicles,
which were used as patrol cars and police vans. In many
rural areas, however, horses and mules were often the sole
means of transportation for constables.

Officers usually were commissioned after completion of a
cadet course at the Ethiopian Police College at Sendafa,
near Addis Ababa. Staffed by Swedish instructors, the school
opened in 1946, but since 1960 the faculty had consisted
entirely of Ethiopians who were police college graduates.
Candidates for the two-year course had to have a secondary
school education or its equivalent. After the Derg took
power, the government increased enrollment to bring new
blood into the national police; from 1974 to 1979, about 800
graduates received commissions as second lieutenants.

Instruction at the college included general courses in
police science, criminal law, tactics, traffic control,
sociology, criminology, physical education, and first aid,
as well as political indoctrination. Practical training was
offered midway in the program and sometimes entailed field
service in troubled areas. Those few cadets who had passed
their final examinations with distinction were selected for
further specialized training. The police college also
offered short-term courses and refresher training for
service officers. It cooperated with the army in training
military police in traffic control and criminal
investigation techniques. By the end of 1990, the police
college had graduated a total of 3,951 officer cadets in the
years since its establishment in 1946.